"And if you SPEND YOURSELVES on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday."

"The Lord will continually guide you. He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail."- Isaiah 58:10-11

Friday, February 15, 2013

Christmas Compassion

We are back on the ground in
Kenya and are thankful for the time spent with family and friends in the US!

I turned 42 last week and
I’m still humbled by how much I have to learn.This last Christmas was no exception…

After traveling for more
than 24 hours, we returned to Kenya from the US late on Christmas Eve.Exhausted, we finally fell into bed
around midnight.On Christmas morning,
we slept in, enjoyed being together as a family, exchanged some gifts and had a
delicious lunch with some friends in the afternoon.

The rest of the week we spent with good friends on The Hill
and the kids we love so much.My
guess is that many of you have a similar Christmas week story - relaxing time
spent with family and loved ones.After all, that’s what Christmas is all about isn’t it?

The first week of January,
we returned to Kijabe to prep for school and to get back into the routine of
life.My house help and good
friend, Njoki, also returned to work for us in the afternoons.Monday, when she arrived, we exchanged
excited greetings and Christmas gifts and gradually settled into deeper
conversation.

Let me tell you about
Njoki.Njoki is a Kikuyu woman,
born to a poor mother who struggled to feed her and her sisters and brothers.
Njoki has a strong, determined personality.Unlike some Kenyans, she doesn’t feel like she is less
important or inferior to white people, nor does she feel arrogant around them,
like other Kenyans.She considers
us equal - equal in the eyes of Christ.Maybe that’s one of the reasons she’s so easy to like.

Njoki went to school through
8th grade and then worked to help support her family.She never married but instead, took in
her sister’s children when her sister died.Then she took in other children who had no place to go.She has a God-sized, compassionate
heart and cannot refuse assisting anyone.So far, she has raised nine desperate children – some so severely ill
when she found them that not even the doctors thought they would live.

She lives near the Kijabe
hospital and takes in anyone who needs help.Her house is a revolving door of people with nowhere else to
go.She has very little money, and
what little she does have, she shares generously with anyone who has a
need.I often send food home with
her and as she leaves, she prays and asks God who it’s for.Sometimes it’s for her children, but
more often than not, she will find a needy person on the way home and give it
to them instead. She lives completely by faith.She has never gone hungry, nor have her children, and she
has a slew of miraculous stories about God’s provision in her life for EVERY need.

“What did you do for
Christmas Njoki?” I asked, not realizing what a loaded question I had
posed.

“Well….,” she said
hesitatingly, choosing her words carefully, “We were all going to be together
in Nairobi at Margaret’s place, but something came up and we decided to stay
here.”Margaret is one of the
girls Njoki raised.Now, mind you,
going to Nairobi is a big deal for this family. Going to Nairobi for them would
be like us going to Disney for a holiday.They were planning to be with close friends that they don’t regularly
get to see.

“What do you mean ‘something
came up,’ Njoki?What happened?” I
pressed.

And then, she proceeded to
tell me about Peterson, the small ten-year-old boy with a big name. She started
slowly, but quickly gained speed, becoming more passionate as she talked. Peterson
is a partial-orphan whose mother died of AIDS and whose father lives on the
streets.Peterson, who also has
lived on the streets, was left at a government orphanage a week before
Christmas.He was so severely ill
that the orphanage staff thought he was going to die.They decided to take him to Kijabe hospital to see if anyone
could help or at least give him a place to die.The government worker who brought him began to inquire
around Kijabe about hiring someone to attend to him.Three different people on three consecutive days came to
care for him.Each, in turn, took
one look at him and refused to even come near him. He was dying.His skin was falling off in
places.He had deep, open, oozing
wounds.He was HIV positive and
questionable for TB.He weighed 22
pounds. The medicine he was given was so painful he would thrash and scream
when the nurses injected it into his IV.Even they were scared to come near him.

The word “Kijabe” means
“place of the wind.”It has a
double meaning in that gossip spreads like the wind around the place as
well.The “Kijabe wind” concerning
Peterson blew right into Njoki’s ear, and she immediately went to the hospital
to see him.As the nurses were
loudly warning her to put on a gown and a mask so she wouldn’t catch a disease,
she indignantly blew past all of them and gently picked the suffering child up
in her arms.She intentionally
kissed him on the forehead and began lovingly stroking his arms and speaking words
of love and encouragement to him.She sat with him all day.This was probably the first time anyone had held him in years.

Later that day, Njoki called
Margaret in Nairobi and told her about the boy.And, like her adopted mother, Margaret without hesitation
said, “I’m coming up, we’ll have Christmas there.”So she did.She
came to Kijabe along with “Big” Elizabeth and Joseph.“Small” Elizabeth and Ephriam joined them.In fact, all of Njoki’s kids came.They spent all of Christmas break
taking turns sitting with Peterson through the day and night and on into
January.They never made it to
Nairobi.

I was stunned by her
story.She gave up 3 weeks to just
sit with a sick little boy, who could never repay her, and let him know that he
was loved by her and by Jesus.Who
does that?Who gives up a
Christmas celebration in Nairobi with friends and family to sit by a stranger’s
bed?Who uses their personal money
to feed someone special meals so they can get strong?Who sacrifices everything like this?

Matthew 25:31-40 says
this:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the
angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he
will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from
the goats. And he will
place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come,
you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty
and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and
you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to
me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord,
when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you,
or naked and clothe you? And
when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to
you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
“

I have pondered this event
in my mind for over a month now.I’ve cried over my lack of true compassion and my selfishness.I’ve had to repent and have had to
admit that I have a long way to go.I have prayed for God to change my heart and to bring me to a place
where I would do anything for the least of these.After all, that’s what He did for me when He sent Jesus to
earth at Christmas. God, the Creator of the universe, humbled Himself and
became a human to let us know we are so loved that He would die for our sin so
we could have a restored relationship with Him.

Though I’ve known it in my
head, I learned something this year about the true meaning of Christmas in my
heart. Though family and friends are important, Christmas is really about
sacrifice - the ultimate sacrifice.I actually saw it lived out in front of me and will forever be changed
by it.

Peterson was discharged in
good health from Kijabe at the end of January and returned to the government
orphanage. Unbeknownst to us, he regressed quickly while he was there and was
readmitted at a different hospital.We were heartbroken to learn that he was near death last week.Njoki rushed to see him on Saturday,
but it was too late and he died that afternoon.He has made a full recovery in the arms of Jesus.Please pray for Njoki and her family as
they are struggling with this great loss.

May we all find opportunity
to serve the least of these today and every day.

On Oasis for Orphans:I could go on about this
story and the frustration and anger we’ve felt over the loss of this boy. We knew he was at risk of beign
neglected in a government facility but we did not know how severly. We were working with Njoki to get him
into her care. She begged the
government workers to have full custody of him.

I cant
even begin to express in words how critical good children’s homs are in
providing care for orphaned children.
Please pray for Oasis, support Oasis and spread the word about Oasis as
we work together to provide homes for the seemingly endless supply of
orphans. We pray that some day
there would be no more Petersons.